Dr. Smock is a demographer and sociologist. Her central research interests are in family patterns as well as change in these patterns over time, particularly engaging their intersections with social class, racial-ethnic, and gender inequalities. Embracing the sub-fields of social demography, family, social stratification, and gender, the substance of her work spans issues of scholarly, policy, and public significance. Fundamentally, her scholarship aims to trace and understand the ways in which social inequalities are shaped, and shaped by, the family.

She has published on an array of topics relating to families and inequality in the United States. These include unmarried cohabitation; the economic consequences of divorce and marriage for women, men, and children; nonresident fatherhood; child support; the motherhood wage penalty; remarriage; single mother families; children’s economic well-being in various family structures; and racial/ethnic differences in family patterns.

Dr. Smock is past Chair of the Section on Family of the American Sociological Association. She has served as Director of the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan, on numerous review panels for the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, as President of the Association of Population Centers, and as an elected member of the Board of Directors of the Population Association of America. She is past Editor of the journal Demography (2013-2016) and is beginning a term as a Deputy Editor for Journal of Marriage and Family.